raqqa

By John Davison RAQQA, Syria, Aug 21 – As Shawakh al-Omar huddled with 16 relatives in a single room in house in Daesh Syrian stronghold Raqqa, a mortar round slammed into the home next door, killing four people and shaking the building. The 57-year-old decided they should make a run for it. “We didn’t even have

Sulaimania, IRAQ, July 17 – A top Kurdish counter-terrorism official said on Monday he was 99 percent sure that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive and located south of the Syrian city of Raqqa, after reports that he had been killed. “Baghdadi is definitely alive. He is not dead. We have information that

By Lisa Barrington and Ellen Francis CAIRO/BEIRUT, July 11 (Reuters) – The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters on Tuesday that it had “confirmed information” that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed. The report came just days after the last sectors of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which Baghdadi’s forces

By Michael Georgy RAQQA, Syria, June 21 – U.S.-backed forces are closing in on Daesh in Raqqa, but local Syrians who have escaped the battlefield are worried about what comes after the fight. Dozens of them have volunteered to help rebuild the town once the militants have been defeated. The aim of organisation they have

MANAMA, Dec 10 – The United States is sending 200 additional military personnel to Syria to help the campaign to drive the Daesh militant group from Raqqa, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Saturday. Speaking in Bahrain at the Manama Dialogue conference on Middle East security, Carter said the 200, including special forces trainers,

Kurdish Intel chief: Without post-Daesh plan, history will repeat itself in Iraq and Syria By Tanya Goudsouzian Lahur Talabani’s journey to the forefront of the global war on terror began in the spring of 2002. It was a year after the 9/11 attacks had Americans questioning their intelligence failures in Afghanistan and the greater Middle East

Mosul residents fleeing Daesh’s hell to cold Kurdish-controlled camps By Cathy Otten During the battle to retake Mosul from Daesh, Nujud Ali, 45, lay on the ground, wounded by a bullet that had just shot straight through her right shoulder and out of her back, knocking her over. The hail of bullets greeted her when she

PARIS, Nov 18 – France has asked a U.S.-led coalition to launch an offensive to surround the Daesh’s Syrian bastion of Raqqa in order to prevent movements of jihadists between Mosul and Raqqa, French government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said on Friday. “There is no offensive yet, but forces are deployed there in a bid

KORRE, Iraq, Nov 7 – In Iraqi Kurdistan he is simply known as Uasta – “the fixer”. For the past 30 years, Mohammed Fadil has been turning hardened steel salvaged from car suspensions into delicate firing pins and other weapon parts to repair the guns used by Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces against their many enemies. Now

BEIRUT, Nov 7 – U.S-backed Syrian armed groups have captured a number of villages in the first days of an offensive to retake the city of Raqqa from Daesh militants, a war monitor and a Kurdish source said on Monday. The ground forces are being supported by airstrikes mounted by a U.S.-led coalition, the source